Portion Sizing
This is a bit of a continuation from my previous blog posting. I referenced portion sizing at the end of my post and I think this has been the most eye opening portion of my lifestyle change.
When you look at packages and it says per 250ml serving or per 100g serving you think you know how much that is. You eyeball it and you think you've only had one serving. I know I did this for years. I was wrong. Very very wrong.
It is absolutely mind blowing how small portion sizes are on a lot of food items and how many calories you can eat for the smallest items (even items that appear healthy like Avocados!) I am now that person at home who measures out pasta, yogurt, fruit, vegetables and everything else imaginable. I have never in my life spent so much time looking at and measuring food portions but I don't really have much of a choice. When you are calorie counting you need to know exactly how much you are eating and measuring food is key to that. The one thing I should buy is a food scale but often with meat I take the weight off the bar code information and divide it into servings and that's how I get my calorie count.
The good thing is that after you've been measuring for awhile, when you eat out at restaurants you can eyeball approximately how much is on your plate and how much if it you can eat (or need to record) at the end of the meal. It won't be exact but, learning portion sizes really does help you consume only as much as you can when eating at restaurants, or with friends and family at their homes.
I hope that the day comes when I can just go back to eyeballing my portions, even at home, because I have learned what a portion size looks like. This however may not happen and it may become a staple of my everyday life. If it helps me keep the weight off that I've lost then I'd be more than happy to measure my food for the rest of my life; it makes that much of a difference.
When you look at packages and it says per 250ml serving or per 100g serving you think you know how much that is. You eyeball it and you think you've only had one serving. I know I did this for years. I was wrong. Very very wrong.
It is absolutely mind blowing how small portion sizes are on a lot of food items and how many calories you can eat for the smallest items (even items that appear healthy like Avocados!) I am now that person at home who measures out pasta, yogurt, fruit, vegetables and everything else imaginable. I have never in my life spent so much time looking at and measuring food portions but I don't really have much of a choice. When you are calorie counting you need to know exactly how much you are eating and measuring food is key to that. The one thing I should buy is a food scale but often with meat I take the weight off the bar code information and divide it into servings and that's how I get my calorie count.
The good thing is that after you've been measuring for awhile, when you eat out at restaurants you can eyeball approximately how much is on your plate and how much if it you can eat (or need to record) at the end of the meal. It won't be exact but, learning portion sizes really does help you consume only as much as you can when eating at restaurants, or with friends and family at their homes.
I hope that the day comes when I can just go back to eyeballing my portions, even at home, because I have learned what a portion size looks like. This however may not happen and it may become a staple of my everyday life. If it helps me keep the weight off that I've lost then I'd be more than happy to measure my food for the rest of my life; it makes that much of a difference.
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